April 19, 2009

ConEstablishment types assume that "assimilation" works automatically, sort of like "osmosis," to solve any minor cultural problems created by heavy immigration. They tend to have this 19th Century picture of assimilation in action: The huddled masses stumble off the docks in Boston, only to notice the Cabots and Lodges glowering at them for their uncouth behavior. Chastened, the newcomers resolve to begin the long struggle to become good Americans just like those august families.

Of course, these days, the descendants of those Puritans are working as program officers for foundations telling the newly-arrived immigrant how much better the culture back home in, say, Guatemala was than the culture created by their Boston Brahmin ancestors - who, as you will recall, were so criminally insensitive as to glower.

There is, however, one vibrant, self-confident culture in modern America: hip-hop. ... Hip-hop is doing what whites no longer have the will or means to do: assimilate the children of Hispanic immigrants.

Of course, Dr. Dre, Puff Daddy, and the rest are leading Latino-Americans toward the African-American model. As I wrote last year, "Currently, 22% of white births are illegitimate compared to 69% of black births. Among immigrant Latino mothers, 37% of their new babies were illegitimate. But among American-born Latino mothers, the illegitimacy rate rises to 48%."

As Jesselyn [8th grade dropout daughter of Salvadoran immigrants] tells it, she assimilated to the surrounding values of gangsta rap. Writing in her eighth-grade yearbook, she celebrated friends as “my n****!” and labeled enemies “crackers,” “bamma” and “whyte.” ...

Part of what sets the area apart is the strain between immigrant parents and their Americanizing children, who wince at their accents and dirty jobs. Langley Park is an immigrant neighborhood where it is an insult to be called an immigrant. Teenagers call the rough-looking newcomers “hinchos,” or “hicks.”

“Hinchos try to look black, but they’re not as good at it as we are,” said Jesselyn’s 14-year-old brother, Victor Jr.

Weak parental authority abets strong gangs. The dominant force in many young lives is Mara Salvatrucha-13, or MS-13, which is known for its violence and international reach. But there are scores of lesser cliques — Street Thug Criminals, Sexy but Stupid — that strive to live up to their name. ...

In addition, the scholars say, a seductive youth culture encourages poor teenagers to denigrate work and school and find valor in violence. Unwilling to take bad jobs, unable to get good ones, teenagers like Jesselyn often seek satisfaction in the streets.

“I’m not going to scrub someone’s toilet,” she said.

Though “assimilation” and “upward mobility” are often used as synonyms, Mr. Portes and Mr. Rumbaut emphasize that they are not the same thing. Some groups move up by resisting assimilation; they study and work in ethnic enclaves. Others assimilate to values and behaviors of the American ghetto.

That is what Jesselyn said she and other poor, streetwise Salvadorans had done: followed the example of poor streetwise blacks.

“They’re like a role model,” she said. “We’re a lot like them.”

Sometimes she said that both groups simply react to the same forces of poverty and prejudice. (“We’ve lived the same thing.”) But she also talked of consciously imitating what she sees as the strengths of poor blacks. (“They don’t let themselves get pushed around.”)

Either way, she saw herself behind a color line, with success beyond her reach.

“I thought the American dream was just meant for white people,” she said. “The big house with the two beautiful kids, the dream car, and the dream career — when the hell you hear a Spanish has that?”

During the Housing Bubble.

As I pointed out most of a decade ago, let's say Latinos are only 1/3rd as likely as African Americans to fall into the underclass. Well, then, in a few decades when the Latino population is three times the size of the current black population, we've created for ourselves a new Hispanic underclass as big as the current black underclass.

43 comments:

Anonymous
said...

There is, however, one vibrant, self-confident culture in modern America: hip-hop. ... Hip-hop is doing what whites no longer have the will or means to do: assimilate the children of Hispanic immigrants.

No group has as self-confident a costume as American blacks: baggy pants, do rags, etc. Their uniform reeks of it. In second place are the gays. The rest of us wear t-shirts and jeans, hoping not to stand out too much. Any wonder people choose to mimic blacks and gays? In the 19th Century who wore the best costumes? The elite. But unlike the hip-hop and queer elite today they were also the elite intellectually and economically.

You put a great deal of emphasis on IQ here, but cultural self-confidence matters, too.

Never apologize for what you believe: it only makes you look like a weenie.

Weak parental authority abets strong gangs.

But gangs are also about simple survival. White gangs will return - and sooner than we all might think.

As a side note, it's nice to see that the daughter of the guy who just lost the presidency - and managed to only pull down 54% in his conservative home state of Arizona - is now giving advice to the GOP. If there's something better than a failed aristocracy giving advice it's a failed, defeated aristocracy giving advice. CNN made it one of its leading stories of the day - guess Susan Roesgen was busy sacrificing cats to Baal.

Obama listens to an almost hour-long harangue from Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, who was airing Central America's legitimate historical grievances against Sam the Banana Man's "United States", and the new man in the White House replies with this:

"To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old."

YOU'RE ALL OFF THE HOOK, STEVE READERS! Rosa Parks. Slavery. Colonialism. That name your grandfather called that guy once. Gone.

On a side note, Secretary of State Clinton refused to answer any questions about Ortega's speech, focusing instead on the things a Secretary of State in post modern America should - the cultural song and dance display at the beginning of the conference:

"To have those first class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space, I was overwhelmed."

Latino immigrants tend to be highly assimilative, and when they settle in overwhelmingly black areas, that includes a considerable degree of assimilation into that culture, including its disfunctional and even pathological aspects. I think the two areas focused on were overwhelmingly black Baltimore and that very black county in Virginia, and the "disfunctional" Salvadoran girl who serves as the focus of the article actually has a black boyfriend. But even under these unfortunate conditions, it was interesting that some of these "assimilating" Salvadorans are regularly denounced by others for "behaving like blacks". Generally throughout the country, grassroots relations between blacks and Latinos are exceptionally bad, similar in many respects to relations between blacks and working-class Irish or Italians, and for much the same reason.

Furthermore, the vast majority of immigrant Latinos settle in areas where either they or whites are the vast majority, and I have seen little evidence of such "pathological assimilation" under these more normal conditions. That's part of the reason that the most heavily Latino large cities in America are also the large cities with the absolutely lowest crime rates. And in Steve's own Los Angeles, the massive inflow of Latinos over the last couple of decades has corresponded to a huge decline in the local crime rate, which is now (I think) lower than when Steve himself was growing up there.

There are certainly some plausible reasons to be doubtful or critical of continued heavy Latino immigration, but the sort of very unrealistic picture presented in the NYT article is not really part of that.

I taught in the CA public school system for over thirty years, same high school. I started this post with a lot to say about downward assimilation from having watched it in operation in my community, in my school, I but realize that the article said it all.

This country has no leadership from either party. Mr. Obama is either a denialist, or at his tender age he still believes in the liberal prayer that all it takes is money and effort to cure our social ills. Wrong.

On second thought, I realize that anyone who's been a community organizer has already learned what I know. He's no Kool Aid drinker like McCain.

People like the Kennedys, McCain, Pelosi....they really don't know any better, ensconsed as they are in their airplanes, sailboats, isolated neighborhoods, but a guy who's been in the streets of Chicago? He knows.

So, he's either just another political opportunist (big surprise) or a guy with a more sinister agenda.

"They tend to have this 19th Century picture of assimilation in action: The huddled masses stumble off the docks in Boston, only to notice the Cabots and Lodges glowering at them for their uncouth behavior. Chastened, the newcomers resolve to begin the long struggle to become good Americans just like those august families."

A big, big, REALLY BIG difference was that in the old days, if you failed to make it here in the US, there were no social services to tide you over. Now even if the immigrants are illegal aliens and so not eligible for most government services, they can qualify on behalf of their US-born children. Up to 40% of the Great Wave immigrants failed and went home.

No so now. Even in failure but with all of the attendant perks, the US is still better than "home". They can fail miserably and still be better off. Thus they stay.

NYT website gets a lot of traffic but a full 1/3 of their audience is foreign. Big surprise that revenue doesn't match the traffic!

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.nytimes.com/

And only 6% of NYT traffic is reading their blogs aka political commissars. That's why so much Orwellian thought control must be inserted into their "news" articles. Like a dose of poison, the public won't drink it straight, so the Koolaid needs to served in a fancy glass with a piece of fruit and sometimes with a little umbrella.

These elite media organs are bleeding cash and they are being euthanized right now by the fed up public. The NYT thought they could act like Pravda and still make money in the marketplace. But if you want to be Pravda then you will need state funding. The New America project is failing fast and the elite that ushered in this calamity must take responsibility. All failed elites get cashiered one way or another.

RKU: That's part of the reason that the most heavily Latino large cities in America are also the large cities with the absolutely lowest crime rates. And in Steve's own Los Angeles, the massive inflow of Latinos over the last couple of decades has corresponded to a huge decline in the local crime rate, which is now (I think) lower than when Steve himself was growing up there.

Others assimilate to values and behaviors of the American ghetto.This "assimilation" phenomenon was crystal clear as early as the 1950s, when the Puerto Ricans first began coming to New York in large numbers. I remember, in the 1960s, having conversations to the effect that it was a shame that these people, due to the facts of city life, had to wind up in poor black neighborhoods, thus, inculcating black habits and attitudes. It was shocking to hear a Puerto Rican speaking solid black dialect. The first time I heard it, I thought, What the hell is a person from the island of Puerto Rico doing talking like this? The Puerto Ricans lost their first generation of sons almost immediately to the vicissitudes of black crime and drugs.

Given the fact of their Catholic background, I wondered, if they had arrived during an earlier period in American history, and landed among a majority of European immigrants, might they have adapted in a different manner? I think so.

Common occurrence in CA, in towns large, small, and in-between: you're stopped at a red light; your car shakes; your ears are assaulted with every negative word for women in the lexicon; you turn to look at the driver.

White. Male. Usually a shaved head. Sometimes a teenager or young twenty-something, but much more depressing than that? White. Male. Shaved head. Nearing 30.

Do you have any thoughts on how to solve this problem of lack of assimilation among Hispanics?Simple solution: stop bringing them in, unless they can meet some kind of IQ-related criteria. Also don't increase welfare benefits to people who conceive children while on welfare.

While Mestizos will continue to do less well than whites and Asians (on average--unless we somehow find every higher-IQ Mestizo on the planet and bring them to the USA), there should be some degree of assimilation.

Well said, Secretary Clinton. Metternich smiles down on you.Actually, when I try to imagine what Hillary's real taste in music might be, I'm coming up with stuff that Metternich might have listened to as well. To me that quote of hers reeked of hypocrisy, not of actual stupidity.

She seems like the target demographic for NPR, musically as well as politically.

Langley Park, Maryland is a working class enclave near the University of Maryland at College Park. It's an impossibly violent barrio. I know this as my father used to work at the University; my sister and brother-in-law lived in Langley Park while he was in graduate school at the University over 35 years ago.

Two days ago a Hispanic girl was thrown off a "crotch rocket" motorcycle at high speed while her Hispanic boyfriend was drag racing others. Except the incident occurred two or four stories up. He was trying to negotiate a 90-degree curve on the overpass of a nearby tollway. The girl is now in critical condition at the "free" county hospital.

Day after day, night after night, the bloodbath continues. http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090418_lj_civale.ea612d98.html

Assimilative?

Complete bullshit.

Even George Bush, an anti-white bigot with a brown person fetish, chose to live in lily white Preston Hollow.

That's part of the reason that the most heavily Latino large cities in America are also the large cities with the absolutely lowest crime rates. And in Steve's own Los Angeles, the massive inflow of Latinos over the last couple of decades has corresponded to a huge decline in the local crime rate, which is now (I think) lower than when Steve himself was growing up there....Why doesn't Steve ever mention crime is at a 40 year low in LA? .Hey, why don't you mention that one of the prime justifications often given for 'bringing undocumented persons in from the shadows' is that they are constantly victimized by criminals, but are afraid to report it to the police for fear of being turned over las Migra?

Given that Metternich lived in Austria from 1773 to 1859, I'd guess that he was fed a steady diet of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Rossini, Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner, and possibly, towards the end of his life, a little early Brahms and Johann Strauss [although probably not any Bruckner or Saint-Saëns, and certainly not any Tchaikovsky or Dvořák], plus a whole mess of other folks whom we would now consider to be lesser composers [if we could remember them at all].

On the other hand, if she even listens to music in the first place, then Hillary probably goes for the likes of Tom Jones, Neil Diamond, and Barry Manilow - although my best guess would be that she's completely tone-deaf and never listens to anything whatsoever.

Even George Bush, an anti-white bigot with a brown person fetish, chose to live in lily white Preston Hollow.It is not lily-white. His property abuts three others. One of those is owned by Tom Hicks (white owner of the Stars and Rangers), another is owned by someone I don't know, and the third is owned and occupied by a man with significant Cherokee heritage and his full-blooded Korean wife (Gene and Roxanne Phillips).

FWIW, a friend of mine works as a trauma surgeon in the emergency ward of a public hospital in Sacramento and he tells me that most of the people he treats are Latino gangmembers who come in (stream in, more like) with gunshot and stab wounds, broken bones and ruptured organs from beat downs, etc. They get stitched up at public expense and sent back out, but rarely do the Latino gangbangers ever file a complaint with the police. They prefer to deal with it themselves.

Salvadorans have the well earned reputation for being the trashiest people in Latin America. They are pariahs among other Hispanics. Honestly, I'm no big fan of Mexican immigration, but Mexicans aren't nearly as bad for America as these losers.

Also, about Puerto Ricans in NYC, they originally settled mostly in Italian neighborhoods, not black neighborhoods. The first Puerto Rican neighborhoods were East Harlem, the Lower East Side, various other tenement neighborhoods in Manhattan, Longwood in the Bronx and near the old Brooklyn waterfront(the various areas that 4th Ave runs through). Puerto Ricans are on average something like 40% southern European, 30% West African and 30% Carib Indian. They aren't prime candidates for assimilating into Anglo-American culture under any circumstances.

Really, it's a terrible tale of how the White race has lost all self-confidence in itself - to the point of not even trying. Cast your mind, if you will, back 100 years ago to the time of high Victorian pomp.No-one could accuse Whites of lacking confidence then.Look at the old pictures and photos at how Whites dressed - the men wearing smart hats, collars and ties all of them, from the prince to the pauper.Witness how blacks of that period sought to mimic the White concept of the 'gentleman' by looking ludicrous in top-hats, tails and walking canes. Now, in today's world, who's imiatating who? Consider the classical music of a century ago - which set the seal on a gentleman's good taste. Consider today's 'popular music'.

Already happening in South Africa. That's why Zuma is making nice with the hardcore Afrikaners, much to the bewilderment and frustration of the liberal Brit/Jewish elite, and of course the liberals in the West. The ANC know trouble when they see it. And Afrikaners have a reputation of being "hardegat" (hard-assed). The Afrikaner youth does not feel any restrictions on account of Apartheid, mostly because they see through the lies being told about Apartheid, and they are victims of black/liberal racism themselves.

What's fascinating is that Arabs and blacks in France have also adopted American ghetto culture.

Poor white people still identify with the country they're poor in. Poor non-whites who see that the bottom is filled with people who look like themselves end up with contempt for where they live. They adopt a hyper-masculinity to overcompensate for their failure. "I ain't stupid, but I ain't gonna sit der wit no book."

Latinos copy what they can use from Hip Hop culture. That is all. They are not mixing with blacks, they have their own sense of who they are. They are not white and they are not black.

The only "assimilation" is that PRs and Salvadoreans and Mexicans are "assimilating" to a transnational Latino political identity and gang culture.

Too many commenters here have no idea what is going on, because their lives are far too secluded and sheltered.

These Latino gangs are organized and they mean business. This is not the disorganized black urban crime you remember from the 1980's, not by a long shot. These are organizations with transnational power hierarchies and access to people with military training and weapons.

I'll post what I wrote in response to RKU saying something to that effect in a mathiew yglesias thread "the compton turnarourd":

Data From 2001: Fixed Error Lowers Rate of Homiced“Currently, Monkkonen said, the homicide rate in Los Angeles is about 11 victims for every 100,000 people. In 1950, he said, the homicide rate was about 3.3 victims per 100,000.”http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/13/local/me-53500

Now let’s look at some racial composition data for LA:Wikipedia:“In the 1940s, a booming defense industry, and the need for additional workers, brought increasing numbers of African-Americans to the city, and by 1965, the black population had multiplied ten times since 1950.”

“In 1970, blacks made up 18 percent of the city’s population, but in 2000 they made up 11 percent.”See wikipedia: History of Los Angeles

So crime skyrocketed in the 1950s LA and the LA black population skyrocketed in the 1950’s. Crime has fallen in recent years and LA has become less black and far more hispanic, but LA crime still hasn’t fallen to back where it was in 1950 when LA had far less Blacks or Hispanics.

Now these changes are probably not the *entire* story, but the data does perfectly comport with Steve Sailer's "White < Hispanic < Black" exposition of crime rates.

40 years ago was 1969, which according to wikipedia was around the time the LA black population was at it's maximum percentage of the population. It really isn't hard to get crime to a 40 year low when the black population halves as a percentage of the population.

Ah, those huddled masses. They were once Swedish and German. Having endured the glares of the Cabots and Lodges for a year or two, it was off to the Midwest or maybe Texas. In short order, and although still huddled, they would bring forth productive farms, machine shops, tool factories, eventually a big piece of the industrial infrastructure of America. They would raise children and grandchildren, who would launch from the deck of the Enterprise, command battle groups in the Pacific, hit the beach named Omaha.

Anyone see anything like that happening with the immigrants the NYT is talking about?

So, do Puerto Ricans speak in black Ebonics because of those Italian neighborhoods they lived in, or do they speak that way due to what you claim is their percentage of blood: "30% West African and 30% Carib Indian?" I think they speak that way due to their assimilation with blacks within black communities. No doubt, those Puerto Ricans who did land in the lower east side did not assimilate in this manner.

Could also be because the stats are being fudged. Bratton is Villaraigosa's bitch, and is as PC as they come.

It could also be because the cops no longer do any real police work. All but the most egregious stuff gets ignored, because having a citizen, oops resident complaint in your personnel file is bad for career advancement.

One thing is for sure, this is no longer Bill Parker's or Daryl Gates' LAPD.

as for the crime rate in LA, it's not low, but lower than it has been in decades. i'm pretty confident this is because

1) america just keep criminals in jail forever now. something that steve has discussed several times. the prison population is 2 or 3 times bigger per capita than it used to be.

2) mexicans forced black americans out of some of parts of LA. it's not just white americans leaving california.

if you look at the LA times homicide map, mexicans still do most of the killing, and do it out of proportion to their numbers. i've noticed that the group categories are now getting fudged, sort of the way the FBI does it, so that lots of people who are not europeans end up in the "white" category, artificially increasing the "white" crime rate. mestizos, central asians, and arabs can all be "white" criminals now.

"Ah, those huddled masses. They were once Swedish and German. ... They would raise children and grandchildren, who would launch from the deck of the Enterprise, command battle groups in the Pacific, hit the beach named Omaha. ... Anyone see anything like that happening with the immigrants the NYT is talking about?"

Yes. These new immigrants will start by taxing the grey economy among their own starting at the local level and then branch out into extortion rackets on a larger scale when they consolidate their territories. They will support politicians and grassroots activity that enhances their revenue stream, co-opt and organize the Hispanic labor pool, and use it for even larger scale extortion.

They will achieve territorial hegemony in parts of the country where they are dominant by allowing low level harassment of rivals on their turf and by funding and helping approved businesses, politicians, attorneys (who become judges some day) and intimidating enemies who are not on the make. They will do all this with the cooperation of corrupt whites out for personal money and power.

Hispanics are already doing it to the urban blacks because they can already win those fights right now. It's only a matter of time (just a few years probably) before they will move up to the main course on the menu, los gringos.

I've worked with a few who identify with them.Me too. I think it's a matter of numbers & demographics (big surprise). If they rival or outnumber blacks, tensions begin. If they don't, they play nice. It takes a critical mass for mestizos to assert themselves.

Filipinos are just a subcategory of Latinos, really. Not surprising when you consider their history. They might officially identify themselves as Asian/Pacific, but under no circumstances should they be lumped in with the East Asians. Except for their black hair and epicanthic folds, Filipinos have nothing in common with Chinese, Koreans, or Japanese.

It's an objective fact the Puerto Rican immigrants originally settled in what were then mostly Italian and Jewish neighborhoods. Later, as whites cleared out of the city and both Puerto Ricans and blacks began to fill up formerly white areas, they often lived in the same areas. Remember, children of Mexican immigrants in places like rural Idaho imitate black underclass behavior too. The get it from the media.

It's also an objective fact the most Puerto Ricans are tri-racial and almost all the rest are biracial. Puerto Rico itself is poor and crime ridden compared to the mainland US. Your little pet theory has been shot down, deal with it.

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